lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and
the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her
emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to
and fro upon the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily
inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now
final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to
the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm
was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old
causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I
turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could wi have issued; for
the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance
was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon which now shone
vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure of which I have
before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a
zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly
widened —there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind —the entire orb
of the satellite burst at once upon my sight —my brain reeled as I
saw the mighty walls rushing asunder —there was a long tumultuous
shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters —and the deep
and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the «HOUSE OF USHER.»
-THE END-